


Breaking the Guard

by WrithingBeneathYou



Series: Ward of Konoha [3]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Pining, Ward!Madara, Warden!Gai, invasion of Konoha
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-02
Updated: 2019-07-02
Packaged: 2020-06-02 14:17:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,648
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19443142
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WrithingBeneathYou/pseuds/WrithingBeneathYou
Summary: Konoha is Madara's village, his dream made flesh. He won’t stay idle while his people fall.





	Breaking the Guard

**Author's Note:**

> This is a prompt fill for the [2019 Naruto Rare Pair Bingo](https://naruto-rarepair-bingo.tumblr.com/) event taking place over on Tumblr. 
> 
> Board A, "pining."
> 
> **Part two of an AU wherein Madara survived the Fourth Shinobi War, but was felled in his battle against Gai.** After the war, he was brought back to Konoha as a ward of the village, much like Orochimaru. Gai, who had his damaged leg removed and replaced by one of Kankurō's prosthetic pieces, was assigned the task of being his warden (with constant check-ins by Kakashi). And that's about the long and short of it. Enjoy! XD

The shrillness of the first scream is so close it feels like the echo of a memory.

Madara startles, not having experienced the eidetic aftershocks of his Sharingan since the sealing five years ago. The loss of access to his chakra is a wound that will never truly scab over, but the calls of fear and agony are certainly something he can live without.

As the first cry peters out into a wet gurgle, another takes its place, this time the high pitch of a child. It’s surprisingly distressing to hear the music of the founding age rise up once again, especially after so long spent enveloped in the comforts of Asura’s peace. His hand shakes as he returns his brush to its holder on the coffee-table. Kakashi’s manuscript soon follows. The juxtaposition between the death in his head and the sweet tale of young love on the paper before him is too jarring to be able to concentrate on editing.

He tears off his spectacles and focuses instead on breathing:

Steepled knuckles on the inhale for four counts.

_Horse, tiger, serpent, ram._

Flattened palms to begin the exhale for four counts.

_Monkey, boar, horse, tiger._

He repeats the exercise until his lips chap from the forced expulsion of air. It’s fruitless. The screams still come, this time accompanied by the telltale sound of explosions. The combustion of sap is such a familiar smell that his fists clench instinctively, tightening around the handle of a nonexistent gunbai. 

Madara staggers to his feet and makes for the kitchen in the hopes that tea will curb this sudden influx of memory, but the next concussion rattles the foundation of his apartment block and knocks Gai’s framed photographs off of the wall.

He stares down at the shards of glass, eyes widening in realization. This is real. The sounds of war, the acrid scent of fire, it’s all real.

Without hesitation, he clears the living room in two strides and leaps over the back of the couch. His palms slam against the window frame so hard it shudders with the force. Reflected in his dark eyes is not the terror of a skirmish between Senju and Uchiha, but bedlam all the same. Shinobi whose names he never bothered to remember hold fast against scattered forces of doton users, harried and wild-eyed.

Skilled as they are, the enemy’s numbers and the risk of collateral damage are against them. Corpses stain the streets red and trip up the feet of foe and friend alike. Death is the only offering civilians can give to this enclosed chakric battleground, Madara knows from experience.

Another piercing yell is followed by a thud against the apartment’s shared wall. The man who lives there is the kindly sort who makes sure to greet Madara and Gai each morning when their paths cross in the hall. His smile never wavers and there’s been several times throughout the years where he’s stopped by to offer them baskets of eggs, surplus from his daughter’s farm just outside of Konoha’s walls.

A long-banked inferno reignites in Madara’s chest as he watches the tip of a blade pierce the wall and disappear as quickly as it came. Silence speaks to him in that moment. It tells him that wards will not hold him—roars the order to engage so loudly it sets his blood aflame.

Breathing with all the might of a bellows, he dashes into the bedroom he shares with Gai and rips the mattress nearly in half to get at the kunai he had hidden there. He whips around and storms into the bathroom, clenching the sink so hard the porcelain cracks even without chakra-assisted strength. His palm bleeds, but he’s too incensed to notice.

How dare these subpar infiltrators threaten what is his—damn their eyes, he’ll cut them all down. This is _his_ village, _his_ dream made flesh. He won’t stay idle while his people fall.

Madara angles the vanity mirror to get a clear view of the side of his neck and follows the whirling loop of the suppression seal tattooed there. It’s well crafted—brilliant even—but the progenitor of this particular seal didn’t think to contain all of the chakra channels in a Gordian knot. The lack of forethought allows him to slip his pilfered kunai in just adjacent to the divot of his jugular and slice through the ink-free skin surrounding one of the array vectors. He grits his teeth against the pain and manages to unmoor only one anchor from the seemingly endless chain of fail-safes. Even so, it’s enough. He can feel the discord in the wards on the apartment. More importantly, he can sense the spark of chakra that burns along the optic nerve of his left eye and brings his reflection into sharp focus.

Madara grins at himself and takes no small amount of joy in the mismatched eyes that stare back at him. Now, he thinks, now it’s time to protect the home he’s made for himself. As if there was ever an enemy who could make Uchiha Madara sweat.

Clothed in nothing more than a threadbare yukata and a mantle of fury, he flickers to the front door and kicks it open just as the shadow of feet disrupt the light beneath. Wood and bone splinter under the force of the blow. The sweet music of a death rattle rises up, thick, warm, and wet, just as the flesh encasing his foot up to the ankle. 

Madara wastes no time in helping the enemy soldier reach the shinigami any quicker. Instead, he reclaims his foot with a squelch and tears the katana out of the man’s slack grip as he takes off down the hall. The wards in the walls pulse once, but fail to find a finger hold in his damaged seal.

The next precious minutes are spent navigating the apartment block and summarily ending any and all who oppose him. He remembers a time when he would laugh at the thrill of it, but now the delivery of death seems to be a hollow pleasure. Instead, he takes heart in the knowledge that every civilian he saves—every ruddy, tear-tracked face—will live on to carry forth the will of Konoha.

The dream will stand strong.

Cutting the flow of chakra to his eye, Madara slip-slides his way down the stairwell and stumbles out into the streets.

Deadly flowers of light bloom in the distance at what must be the main front. Hatake and Gai will be there, he knows, just as he knows that in this instance he can be of no help to either. For all intents and purposes, he is a civilian no matter how his ego rails.

Regardless, he will protect as many as he can while others fight the battle that he cannot.

Waves of foreign chakra assault him from all angles, carrying with them the sound of rent flesh. As he gets his bearings, a familiar jounin sweeps past on a bird made of ink, riding the crest of a fuuton storm.

Light flares across the skyline in the direction of the tower. The Academy.

In that moment of inattention a hand lands in his hair and pulls him off balance.

The long line of it had been his herald for countless decades, a symbol of his might. Now, it’s little more than a hindrance. He slices it clean off at the nape with his stolen sword and divests his foe of their head on the down stroke. 

No longer so encumbered by conceit, he takes off sprinting down the road.

Blades and jutsu alike impede his path as he races along the track of an ill-used map in his head. Every lungful of air is hard-fought even with the strict training regime Gai insists they go through. It’s the alien taint of fear that makes each breath burn. Though, that same terror lends power to his stride.

Once, he thinks he hears the call of his name as he passes scores of faceless shinobi. It’s simplicity itself to pay it no mind. They have battles to win and so does he—conflicts that have nothing to do with old grievances and reparations.

Without chakra to guide him, he makes several wrong turns, cursing vehemently at each. Smoke and ash make his eyes water and sting his throat. Still, he blinks quickly to clear it, looks up to the sun, and takes off once more.

For his people, for his village, he runs.

Finally, his goal looms before him, a stark and imposing wall amidst the backdrop of pandemonium. There are signs of infiltration at the front door of the Academy—bent hinges and scuff marks on the concrete. Suddenly, that great driving force that took him from one end of the village to the other without pause is bolstered by an even fiercer resolve.

He shifts his angle of attack and comes at the Academy from the east instead. One powerful leap launches him half-way up the first story. He digs his fingers and toes into the lines of mortar, heedless of the pain, and scales the façade up to the third story. Reinforced thatch bows under his weight as he bounds along the sun shades then abruptly drops. At the last second, he twists in midair and grabs hold of the shade frame, using his momentum to smash his bare heels into the window below. The glass gives under his weight with a cacophonous crash, spewing shards across the bowed backs of cowering children.

Useless though it is, his left eye blazes with all the force of a wild-fire.

Dozens of faces—still round with the hallmarks of youth—gape up at him in horror. He knows he must look like the shinigami’s hand with his butchered hair, wild eyes, and blood-soaked yukata gaping wide. Still, there’s no time for reassurance. Framed in the doorway, Umino Iruka bares his teeth and bows his head as he fights to hold a barrier seal.

This is a name he remembers, a name he will not soon forget, Madara thinks.

Unfortunately, the surprise of his arrival is enough to make the man’s concentration falter. Iruka’s shield rocks under the force of a heavy hammer blow and fine cracks begin to spread through it like yellow threads on a spider’s web. Madara hisses, sprints across the field of glass, and drives his stolen katana straight through the enemy ninja’s forehead at the exact moment that the barrier collapses.

He grunts as his breath is knocked out of him by a partial blow to the chest, but even mostly powerless, he is made of tougher stuff. The body slips from his blade and hits the floor with a meaty thunk. Panting, he lifts the loose flap of skin on his neck in the hope that further interrupting the circuit of the seal will allow him to extend his senses. Instead, the small bit of chakra feeding his eye fizzles out and so too does his patience.

When the enemy is brought down and the village is safe once more, he’ll be petitioning Hatake for access to his chakra coils at least during emergencies or he’ll take to lighting the man’s manuscripts on fire the conventional way.

Baring his teeth, Madara drives his bare foot down on the fallen shinobi’s skull, right where the twin boulders shine up like a taunt in the florescent light. There’s hard resistance, then an abrupt give as his heel sinks through. If his body and his sword arm are his only reliable weapons in this, then he’s damn well going to use them. With prejudice. 

A brief check of the hall reveals only the one downed presence. 

“Uch—Uchiha Madara?” Iruka asks shrilly, wide-eyed and panicked at his back.

Madara turns to face him and is pleased to see that the fear doesn’t linger. Iruka squares-up almost immediately, hands flying up to flash through a series of signs that Madara knows very well. He surges forward and interrupts the katon jutsu by clasping Iruka’s hands against the exposed v of his chest one-handed.

“I am not your enemy,” he intones gravely. “And woe betide those who have made themselves _my_ enemies today. You have an evacuation route, yes? Get the children there. I’ll hunt down the rest of these puling cowards.”

Iruka snarls, struggling to reclaim his hands. Resolve burns brightly in his eyes, as arresting as a dojutsu. “What have you done with Gai? How do I know you’re not the one who led them here in the first place?” 

As heartening as it is to see the fire in him, Madara doesn’t have time to spare convincing this man of his beneficent intent.

“Maito Gai has gone where I cannot follow and I don’t care what you think of my personage, you will get these children to safety, now!” he bellows, loud enough to shake the rafters.

Iruka takes the measure of him in silence, and then nods.

“Okay, yes. I will. Thank you,” he says, pulling away wearily and motioning for the children to follow.

“Don’t thank me for protecting my own,” Madara scoffs as he steps over the dead body and takes point. “I don’t have access to my chakra. You’ll have to direct me. I need ordinal commands and locations of the enemy. Can you do this?” He throws a dark look back over his shoulder, satisfied to note that Iruka holds his gaze and doesn’t waver.

“Head west for fifteen meters, then bank north. There will be a long hall with a hidden panel on the east wall, twenty meters in. I can take it from there. I can’t sense anyone in the corridors, but I’m also not the best sensor.”

“I’m not expecting you to be the second coming of Senju Tobirama,” Madara snaps churlishly as he softens his knees and advances down the hall. 

Sniffling children cling to each other and Iruka’s legs like limpets as they begin to move past the desecrated body. His hands on their heads and whispered words of comfort do little to ameliorate the horror. If anything, it makes the tears spill more.

As Madara recalls, he was their age when he engaged in his first major skirmish. He had ripped the flesh from his enemies with his teeth when his sword failed to bite deeply enough. But, this is a different time. These children have had the luxury of a life lived without the expectation of loss—there are no siblings specifically designated as spares, no nights spent reliving the death rattle of their own parents.

It’s up to the bent and twisted remnants of eras past to shoulder those burdens. And by Kami, he will. 

His party makes it down to the junction without incident.

Madara lingers at the corner, watching for any sign of movement behind them, and then quickly jogs back to the front. The gentle hum of a keypad twists the beat of his heart into something strange and new as Iruka enters in a well-practiced sequence.

“The code is zero-zero-nine-seven-two-zero,” he says without hesitation. There’s tentative hope in the hand he settles on Madara’s shoulder. “There should be two classrooms in session on this floor and three on the second. The first floor is nothing but administrative offices. Please bring them back safely.” With that, Iruka shuffles the last of the children through the escape hatch and waves as the hatch slides shut.

There’s no time to waste. Madara spins on his heel and stretches his neck, then his shoulders. He hasn’t felt fear for the wellbeing of others since Izuna. It’s odd to experience that now.

Jogging back the way he came, he methodically searches the classrooms on the third story, finding nothing but splinters and dolefully humming lights in the east wing. Every empty room drives another stake of anxiety into the pit of his stomach, makes his brow bead with sweat.

This will not be a failure. He will tear every last bit of skin from his neck and let the Susanoo rampage through the bones of Iwa itself if he discovers even one tiny, broken body.

The West wing turns up much the same until a muffled sob rises up from the last room. Too incensed to bother with subterfuge, Madara shoulders open the door and takes measure of the situation with a practiced eye. All of the missing genin huddle together beneath the watchful gaze of a kunoichi, her body more armor than skin. At the head of the room, the attention of two Iwa shinobi snaps from their game of dice to the unholy spectacle filling the doorframe. The white, sightless eyes of two chunin instructors stare up at the ceiling, their bodies serving as softer seating when stools wouldn’t suffice.

Madara’s building growl is bestial, gaining in volume until the ferocity of it overflows and sets his face alight. It’s not a joyous smile; it’s a grin so full of teeth that he appears more monster than man. In this moment, he is not Uchiha Madara, son of Uchiha Tajima, descendent of Otsutsuki Indra—he is the shinigami’s will and Asura’s hand.

His rage closes the space between himself and the kunoichi faster than a shunshin and he finds her armor folds like rice paper beneath his fist. He rears back and blasts his knuckles into the same indentation over and over again, driven by strength born of desperation. When his hand clenches around her heart, he wrenches the pulpy mass out and screams his victory to the rafters.

Stunned by the feral show of violence, the two remaining shinobi hesitate.

There’s a flash of recognition there. Both of these men fought in the Fourth Shinobi War. Both likely buried friends and comrades when he, the Second Sage, swept a line of death through their ranks so potent the earth quaked.

A pity there will be no one left to bury them in turn.

Madara howls wordlessly and charges. There’s true terror in his foes’ faces, even though they can sense nothing from him. He is a civilian, a ghost, but his sword arm is strong and his convictions even more powerful than that. The thickly muscled man on the right overcomes his shock first and rockets up to his feet, deeply-burnished hands flying through a series of seals with alacrity.

Just as the doton jutsu takes shape, Madara spins without breaking stride and lets the abrasive jet of stone shred through the back of his yukata. The added momentum lends power to the turn, which he channels into a well-aimed blow to the side of the man’s head. His groin protests the stretch of a too-high target, but the sound of a body smacking the wooden floors makes up for it.

Still, his triumph is short lived. A razor-thin line of air whooshes just above his scalp, sheering off another clump of hair. He dances out of the way of several follow-up blades, only narrowly avoiding having his limbs amputated by instinct alone. A second volley has him flipping and spinning midair, carefully angling his body to draw the last shinobi’s attack away from his young charges. This is not a game he will win, but still the conflagration in his soul urges him to be stronger, faster, better.

He strikes the next storm front head on, his katana snapping under the force of the blow and halving the jutsu with the deep, percussive toll of a gong. The concussive blast rocks the building and sends him crashing through the teaching podium and tumbling like a rag doll into the wall. His bones ache, but his grip on the broken sword stays firm. Gnashing his teeth, Madara pushes off of the wall to regain his feet and press the attack once more.

The Iwa shinobi whips up and, sensing movement, begins to flash through another set of seals.

It’s at that moment that Madara’s sharingan chooses to flicker back to life. Every stride occurs in a series of still shots. His footfalls strike with the same metronomic beat that drives the enemy’s linen-wrapped fingers. He won’t make it in time to save himself. It doesn’t matter, though. If he swings his blade and releases it at the lowest point of the pendular arc, it will tear right through the man’s liver at an angle. He’ll bleed out in a matter of seconds

They will fall here together, but the genin will live. Gai will understand.

However, before the culmination of his sacrifice can play out in full, a wave of mokuton ripples through the floor and spears the man through. His palms fail to meet on the final hand seal. Even sweeter is the surprisingly cheery snap of his neck.

Madara stumbles to a standstill.

As pleasant as it is to still be standing, the denial of his climax rankles. His sharingan shorts out again and he’s left with nothing more than the tattered remnants of his humanity.

“Hashirama?” he rasps as he tries to catch his breath.

“Damnit, Madara, you know I’m not Lord First,” Yamato retorts tartly. He rolls his eyes as he slips into the room and swiftly takes stock of the downed shinobi, then does a brief mental headcount.

“No, you’re not, are you? You’re far too weak. A second-rate imposter, then,” Madara drawls, hissing the final words through his teeth when standing tall pulls at his over-stretched groin.

Yamato sighs as if they haven’t had this exact same conversation every single time they meet. “I’m not an—would you just shut up and let’s get out of here,” he says, voice strained.

The break in urgency plasters a lopsided grin on Madara’s lips. If Yamato is here, the children will be fine. As much as he ridicules the poor man, he has genuinely grown to respect this last vestige of the Senju familial line—even if the sight of that happuri still gives him fits.

He grunts and waves his ruined weapon at the floor. “Have the remaining children been evacuated?”

“Yeah. These are the last. Izumo and Kotetsu are cleaning up the rest of the sector so we should be alright now,” Yamato replies, strangely forthcoming with the information.

Madara nods and runs his fingers through his absolutely ruined hair.

Several of the braver genin stand on shaky legs and reach down to help their cohorts. He watches them rally from what was surely a harrowing experience and can see the embers of fight shine through the veil of blood and bruises. Though he’ll never say it, he’s glad that at least Hashirama’s progeny can be here to witness Konoha’s perseverance.

He limps his way up to the dais, only now realizing that he’s been running around painted in blood with his entire front exposed. The absurdity of it makes him choke on a laugh.

“You look like crap,” Yamato points out helpfully.

“I do,” Madara confirms, sobering as he pulls his yukata closed and firmly resituates his obi.

It’s a surprisingly quiet, orderly procession that makes its way to the escape tunnel. Though, most things directed under Yamato’s careful oversight are. Madara trails behind them with slow, measured steps. The adrenaline that had set his blood to boiling makes his hands shake in the aftermath. Hurts accrued during his mad rush to protect the academy make themselves known in a myriad of ways—glass turns each footfall into a small agony, the broken blade of a kunai sticks out from the meat of his deltoid, and a dozen shallow slices crisscross his chest and arms from barreling through what must have been a ninja wire trap. For the life of him, he can’t recall taking any of the damage.

Finally, the last of the children make their way to safety and he can rest. The coolness of the wall is a balm pressed up against his weeping abrasions. Hatake is going to be so pissed off. The asshole is probably going to have puppies and Gai—surprisingly Madara has no idea how Gai is going to react to this.

After all, Madara did the one thing he said he could never do—he betrayed his precious person’s trust. He purposefully broke their contract in all the ways that mattered.

Hatake’s mandates were laid out for him in no uncertain terms. He was to remain on house-arrest for the duration of his tenure in Konoha unless accompanied by an appropriate retainer, or else he would be cut down on sight. Handling weapons was forbidden and, if caught with one on his person, execution would be swift and summarily dealt. He was not to tamper with the fuinjutsu around his neck, lest he be identified as an enemy of the village and eliminated. Death, death, and more death. He was—

“You were going to die for them,” Yamato states, breaking through his maudlin thoughts.

“I was,” Madara replies simply. At least losing his life in battle would have been honorable. Now that he has time to consider, he thinks he would have been better off falling to an enemy shinobi than being struck down with the tender weight of Gai’s disappointment heavy on his shoulders.

Yamato eases himself down and tailor-sits next to him. When Madara wound up on the wooden floor, he can’t recall. But there’s a smear of blood and serous fluid on the wall, so he must have slid down at some point.

“Why?” Yamato asks with none of the snark that typically characterizes their conversations.

His solemnity prompts an honest answer.

“Because I am of Konoha,” Madara says simply. “All my life has been spent in the pursuit of peace. I was wrong the first time, and I refuse to make that mistake again.”

He takes in a slow, deep breath— _horse, tiger, serpent, ram._

And exhales just as deliberately— _monkey, boar, horse, tiger._

“My dream now is to see these children grow to have children of their own. It is not possible to save the people of the world from the horrors they enact upon themselves, but I can damn well protect those that are mine.”

Madara moistens his lips and looks down at the broken skin on his knuckles. Funny how the room swims following that frank admission. It must be chakra feedback from his optic nerve. Surely it’s not that he’s grown soft waking up to bird song and the snores of a slumbering beast.

Yamato watches him in silence then shifts closer until their knees touch. He smooths the flap of skin back down on Madara’s neck and heals the wound with a warm burst of Iryo ninjutsu. The flood of chakra feels so much like Hashirama’s own that Madara’s stomach clenches.

Kami, he misses that man’s stupid face.

“Don’t move,” Yamato instructs as he readies a chakra needle and tattoos another layer of fuinjutsu to the weakened vector Madara had so skillfully teased out. The sting is inconsequential, but it pains him all the same.

“There’s another flaw in the sequence to the right of my spine,” Madara points out.

That too is diligently sealed. Fingers trace the loops and whorls all the way back to the sun-like array on his throat, bobbing as he swallows heavily.

“Is that it?” Yamato asks.

“Yes,” Madara replies. There is no glorious thrum in his left eye, no call of fire and ash in his heart. The doors to that part of himself have closed once more.

“Alright. I think we’re all set, then. Feels like they’ve got things taken care of out there. Let’s get you back home. If we’re quick about it, maybe Kakashi won’t realize you’ve been gone,” Yamato says with faux cheer, eyes crinkling at the corners.

Scoffing, Madara rocks forward to get his feet under him and stands all in one motion. His body feels broken. Even so, he reaches down and offers a hand to Yamato, broadening his base of support and pulling the man up with one powerful yank. Yamato inhales sharply, but otherwise doesn’t deign to comment.

“If I survive this, I’m teaching you how to use the mokuton properly,” Madara says, apropos of nothing. “I refuse to watch you squander Hashirama’s gift.” He spins in place—though the move is nowhere near as impressive without the waterfall of hair fanning out behind him—and limps towards the stairs.

Yamato is surprisingly gifted for having learned the mokuton so well on his own, but there are things that cannot be discovered without perpetual war as a driving force. This is the largest token of gratitude he can offer and still it pales in comparison.

“And how exactly do you plan to do that?” Yamato calls out, walking quickly to catch up. “The only wood release you’ve got isn’t exactly impressive.” There’s a tone of puckish delight in his voice that doesn’t bode well.

Despite their situation, Madara can feel the heat rising on his cheeks. “At one point I was the most powerful dojutsu user in the world. Do you think I would learn nothing having regularly fought the man you try so hard to imitate?”

He can almost hear the herculean effort it takes for Yamato to rein in his knee-jerk quip.

“Okay, fine. Now stop hopping down the stairs, it’s making me nauseous just watching you.”

The trip back to Gai’s apartment takes far longer than his sprint to the academy, though Madara isn’t sure whether that comes from the slowed pace or the anxiety churning in his gut. Yamato fashions a crutch for him when he refuses to accept the offer of a shoulder in support.

Countless battles he’s faced, yet coming home is the only one whose outcome he’s ever feared.

They arrive at the apartment building without incident. The bodies of enemy shinobi still line the halls where Madara went on his rampage. Congealed blood dangles from the ceiling and bone fragments pepper the stucco. The gory overkill garners a lingering, side-ways glance from Yamato, but nothing more. Finally, Yamato steps past him and gingerly hops over the door with the corpse beneath it. There’s no way to rehang anything on the exploded hinges, so he doesn’t bother, just fashions another one and lets it lean against the frame for now. 

By a stroke of good fortune, Madara realizes they’ve made it back before Hatake or Gai.

“Alright, well, get your ass over here and I’ll patch you up,” Yamato orders with an impatient wave. He pats the dining room table pointedly. “I would ask you to strip and show me your wounds, but you’d have to be wearing clothes in the first place.”

The dry humor is meant to put him at ease, Madara realizes. He wonders what he has done to earn this kindness, but forgoes thinking and simply follows the order. It’s easier like this.

Yamato’s touch is surprisingly soft as he maps the ragged edges of Madara’s wounds. They’re beginning to swell and purple around the edges, weeping clear fluid. Suddenly, that tenderness turns brutal as Yamato sprouts a pair of forceps and starts removing the shrapnel.

“Give me a two finger span of wood,” Madara grunts.

Shrugging, Yamato does so, then promptly goes back to fishing shredded ninja wire out of the wound beds and debriding the open flesh.

The chunk of wood cracks under the force of Madara’s jaw. Thankfully, it holds the building whine at bay. It takes an inordinately long time to clear him, but the rush of Iryo jutsu is well worth it. Warm, glowing light fills the broken parts of him and builds them anew. He groans with relief and lets the wood fall from his slack lips.

Yamato retrieves it, frowns at how deep his teeth had sunk into the ironwood, and reabsorbs it without fanfare. Job done, he pats Madara’s bare thigh.

“So I just wanted to thank you for helping me out today. I know it was a little weird to stop by and recruit a civilian, but you know, we needed all the hands we could get,” he says, voiced pitched high with affected good cheer. He glances up from beneath his brow and drives home his point with dark intensity.

Madara slowly closes his eyes and turns his face to the sunlight shining over his shoulder.

“No,” he replies hollowly. He is a shinobi, a man born to lies, but this one rankles. “While I appreciate the offer. No. I will bear consequence of my actions. ”

A pregnant silence hovers between them until Yamato finally claps him on the shoulder.

“Good. I wasn’t going to cover for you anyways. I just wanted to see what you would say.”

Shrugging under the force of Madara’s glare, he turns and begins to bustle around the kitchen on the hunt for Kakashi’s hidden stash of gyokuro. 

“Go get cleaned up. You look like a charnel house and smell ten times worse,” he chirps dismissively.

Seething, Madara leaves him to it and unties his obi on the way to the washroom. He absently tosses his yukata into the small trash pail under the sink and climbs into the shower. The cold water hits his skin—as brutally frigid as the Naka in winter—and he goes through the motions of washing with little pleasure. It’s strange to shampoo his scalp and reach back to find nothing but ragged edges. His head feels lighter, he thinks, and the collar-like seal is on full display like this.

If he somehow manages to survive his treason, Hatake will enjoy the visible reminder, at least.

Gai will probably try to shape what’s left of his mop into a bowl cut, the very symbol of youth.

The thought startles a bark of laughter out of him. He may have adopted the Will of Fire, but he draws the line at that. His amusement peters out quickly enough, though he can’t help the soft smile that lingers. Kami, he hopes this won’t be his last time he sees that ridiculous thumbs-up directed at him.

Long after his fingers have pruned, he runs out of thoughts to warm him and cuts the flow of water. His towel hangs on the hook—yellow next to spring-growth green. He takes it and dries off perfunctorily, wrapping it around his waist as he exits the washroom. The brief flash of reflection he catches in his periphery looks almost eerily like his late father.

How fitting.

The ebb and flow of conversation beckons from the kitchen. He can hear Hatake and Yamato exchanging friendly banter as they always do and chooses to make his way to the bedroom instead. It’s not a retreat he tells himself, though he absolutely knows it is. Perhaps he’ll survive this, perhaps he won’t, but he can’t face Hatake’s inscrutable eyes right now.

Madara backs into the room and closes the door slowly enough to avoid the squeak of its hinges. He’s careful to depress the handle to lessen the click as it shuts. Sending forth thanks for small mercies, he rests his forehead to the door and lets go of his held breath.

“Hey,” Gai says from behind him. 

And of course. Of course Madara wouldn’t be spared for even a moment from this eventuality. He’s too proud to cower, and so he retakes the air he lost and turns to face the man he’s come to care for with every ounce of Uchiha blood left to him. Tobirama must surely be laughing from his grave, mocking him even in death.

He was a fool to think he could ever trade the Curse of Hatred for love with longevity.

He scans the room as he turns and notes that the bedroom has been remade from when he tore through it. The shredded bed sheets have since been replaced by the ones with little ninken on them that Madara complains about, but is secretly fond of. And in the middle of it all, Gai sits more still than he ever has, elbows resting on his knees.

“Yamato relayed the heroic tale of your aid in defense of our village today,” he announces, smiling, though it doesn’t reach his eyes. “I also spoke with Iruka and Kotetsu.”

Strange how when the axe falls, it cuts through the fear first. Madara closes the space between them and comes to stand between Gai’s thighs. The muscular shoulders beneath his hands are tense, speaking far more loudly than the lack of boisterous cheer. 

“And what did they have to say?” he asks, eyes never straying from Gai’s.

“Many confusing things,” Gai replies. He deliberately straightens to his full height while staying seated and pulls Madara in close enough to plant a chaste kiss on his stomach. His lips remain pressed to the sensitive area between Madara’s lower ribs and his palms settle around his waist, just above the line of the towel. 

Madara wants to scream until his throat bleeds, wants another foe to sink his frustrations into. Instead, he swallows against the building tightness in his chest and runs his fingers through the ridiculous bowl cut he has grown to love.

It’s with obvious care that Gai pulls back and looks up to catch his attention. As if he didn’t have it already.

“I want you to explain.”

There’s no flowery language, no rise and fall or lilting song to the request.

And so, Madara watches his reflection in dark eyes and openly admits to each and every count of treason.

“I had thought the screams this morning were waking nightmares,” he begins. “I’ve explained the repercussions of the sharingan, but perhaps not well enough. Our memories don’t feel like conventional memories. We relive the horrors we’ve experienced through every sense. This morning was no different than mornings prior to the seal and so I thought little of it until I realized—” His voice peters off as he clenches his jaw. “I couldn’t sit idly by. The suppression seal was done well, but not well enough. I’ve known how to disable it and bypass Hatake’s wards for some time now. I—recall very little of the time between leaving here and arriving at the Academy.”

A lie. His Sharingan will never let him forget the release of six years of pent up aggression.

Gai’s fingers stroke circles into the small of Madara’s back. The touch is grounding and familiar, as is the rumble of his voice against skin. Still, these are simply the last vestiges of the affections they once shared. Madara knows not to take comfort in the sweetness he’s lost. 

“Why did you go to the Academy?” Gai asks without inflection.

Madara puts a stranglehold on his heart and reflects that same stoicism.

“I was too weak to follow you, so I chose a battle I was more suited for,” he states sharply.

“You only went there to feel your blood sing in combat against lesser foes?”

It’s not like Maito Gai to be cruel. Every question makes Madara’s jaw clench—they all feel like another unnecessary step between himself and Hatake’s chidori. He just wants this to be done.

“Yes.”

That statement finally draws Gai’s lips down into a frown. “Oh.”

And that seems to be the end of it. The frown persists, deepens when Madara refuses to say anything further.

A long minute passes before that obvious disappointment proves to be too much. Maintaining his pride can’t be worth this condemnation in the eyes of the one man he respects more than any other. Madara hangs his head and lets emotion bleed back into him.

If he has already lost, then let him be defeated entirely.

“No, of course not,” he admits into the shield of his remaining bangs. “There were children, Gai. I could see the smoke and I knew if I were an invading force, I would draw the shinobi to the main front and take out the next generation and the civilian support in one fell swoop. My father was well versed in the art.”

The bitter taste of Tajima’s tactics still brings up bile. Thankfully he was never made to be complicit in such atrocities. His father was well aware of his failings—he would not risk his victory on the weaknesses of a soft son.

Madara doesn’t move to catch his towel as it slips from his hips. Let him be laid bare entirely.

“I had to decide between staying loyal to you or protecting the students to the best of my ability, and I chose them. Every step of the way, I knew I was giving up this life I’ve grown to cherish and at each turn I buried the tanto deeper and deeper into your back. I’m no better than Hashirama in this and I will not ask for forgiveness I don’t deserve. You entrusted me with your faith and I betrayed every single bond you’ve asked of me. And, were I given the opportunity to act differently, I would choose the same path time and time again without question.”

Breathing through his nose grows harder as the pressure behind his eyes builds.

Ever his anchor, Gai forgoes the gentle massage and takes Madara’s hands in his own. He places a kiss on each knuckle, then turns them over to do the same to his sweaty palms. “You claim you disrupted the seal, but Iruka said you had no chakra,” he confides softly.

Trying to combat the gathering tears, Madara tilts his head up to the ceiling and takes a moment to simply breathe. Gai patiently waits for him to continue.

“My left dojutsu would flicker, but I had no access to anything beyond that.”

“And yet you still flowered the seed of strength in defense of those tender new leaves who could not defend themselves,” Gai presses.

“Yes.”

Madara doesn’t quite understand what he’s getting at, nor where this conversation is going. If he’s honest with himself, he doesn’t understand a thrice-damned thing that’s happened in the past five years.

Nodding to himself, Gai shifts back and draws Madara down to sit beside him. He squeezes Madara’s knee and kisses the side of his head, where the katana dug in deep enough to expose his scalp. Without speaking, Gai proceeds to depress the suction valve on the socket of his prosthesis and pull. It comes off with a faint swoosh. He hands the strange curve—his go to in spars when he needs agility with a strong foot strike—to Madara and proceeds roll the sleeve off of his residual limb.

They do this every evening. It’s ritualistic and so unbearably domestic it hurts at a time like this.

Madara props the limb up next to the nightstand, startling when Gai clears his throat and begins to speak again. 

“Despite everything, you took up arms and stood firm against those who would harm the village,” he repeats once again.

Hanging from tenterhooks for too long, Madara’s frustration finally begins to seep though. 

“Yes! How many times must I reiterate the depths of my betrayal,” he hisses, brushing off the hand that resettles on his thigh. “I cannot say it again! Stop dragging this out and let Hatake run me through and finally be rid of me!”

“Madara,” Gai calls softly. “Now you know what it is to house the Will of Fire in your breast.”

There’s a callous-rough palm on his face, turning him towards Gai’s earnest voice, but Madara can’t look. He slams his eyes closed before he does anything stupid—like beg.

“Wonderful. It only cost me everything to do so.”

There’s a huff of laughter. “I wouldn’t consider your voluminous hair and a rather old yukata ‘everything’,” Gai says.

Then there’s the familiar warmth of his lips pressed against Madara’s, and oh how he could grow old in the cloister of those thick arms. Madara is no lightweight himself, but Gai easily manhandles him onto his lap, chest to chest, and kisses him breathless.

“What?” Madara asks blankly when they part.

Gai smiles up at him and it’s as if the clouds have gone.

“Yamato described the exposed exploits of your warrior’s passion in great detail. I must say, I regret having missed such a show.”

Surely it can’t be this easy. Even the great Red Beast cannot be this forgiving. Something of his disbelief must show on his face, because that bright, booming cadence continues.

“My friend, protecting this village can never be a betrayal. It is the flame that burns in all of us and lights the beacon of camaraderie and hope. I am overjoyed that you too now know what it means to carry that tender burden. Your actions this day speak well of your character,” Gai proclaims, holding Madara’s face gently between his hands.

“But, I expressly broke every single one of Hatake’s edicts,” Madara maintains.

There’s a bark of laughter and Gai’s grin turns wry. “And our esteemed Hokage understands the circumstances driving your decision to do so,” he explains, emphasizing Kakashi’s title.

“I betrayed you!”

“You did not.”

This is unfathomable. Madara has no idea who activated the Infinite Tsukuyomi or why, but this kind of tender regard, this raw acceptance cannot be real. “You’re all insane,” he begins, building up to a yell. “And you, Maito Gai. You’re the worst of them!”

They can probably hear him from in the kitchen, but he doesn’t care. Particularly not when Gai takes advantage of his inattention and rolls them back onto the bed, plastering himself firmly within Madara’s instinctual butterfly guard.

“A title I will bear proudly, my love!” he crows back, voice muffled as he plants a line of decidedly unchaste kisses along Madara’s collarbone.

Love.

And with that, the agony breaks. Madara laughs and laughs until his withheld tears finally spill.

If only Hashirama could see him now.

He thinks he would be proud.


End file.
